11 ms·
No Hello
- eamag 1y agoalso: https://nometa.xyz/ https://nometa.xyz/
- Thin_icE 1y agoI started putting nohello as my status message, but soon after I found nometa and replaced it with this.
- susam 1y agoA similar guideline has been around on IRC networks for as long as I can remember. Many channels include it in their 'topic' or have a bot that reminds users: Don't ask to ask, just ask. See also <https://netsplit.de/channels/?chat=don%27t+ask+to+ask https://netsplit.de/channels/?chat=don%27t+ask+to+ask>.
- cogogo 1y agoThe first startup I worked at used IRC - well before slack etc. I hadn’t touched it since I was a teenager and think I managed to violate just about every internal channel guideline. Took me a minute to understand what “echan” meant.
- NackerHughes 1y agoFor the rest of us, what does “echan” mean? Searching online for “irc echan” wasn’t much good. edit: some wider-range searching suggests it might be Spanish for “kicked”.
- noahjk 1y ago"Echan" = "empty channel" - IRC slang for joining a channel, seeing no recent activity, and immediately leaving. It's considered bad etiquette because IRC channels are often quiet but still active - you're supposed to stick around and just ask your question directly rather than bailing when you don't see instant chatter.
- 9034725985 1y agoThere is a similar one: https://aka.ms/nohello https://aka.ms/nohello which redirects(?) to https://sbmueller.github.io/nohello/ https://sbmueller.github.io/nohello/
- emblaegh 1y agoMy life hack for this kind of situation is to say “hello” back. Works every time.
- quchen 1y agoHow are you? I hope this message finds you well. I have a question. ------- It’s simply not a game I want to play. My mind recommends answering »state your business«, but my polite-mind tells me not to.
- 4pkjai 1y agoWhen people give me a hello back I raise them a “how are you?”
- IshKebab 1y agoFine thanks, how are you?
- askew 1y agoaskew is typing…
- nubinetwork 1y agoSeveral people are typing...
- macintux 1y agoIt took me a depressingly long time to figure out that when people (offline) ask me how I am, they don’t expect, or want, an answer.
- int_19h 1y agoThe whole "How are you?" ritual is quite possibly the most nonsensical thing about the Anglo cultures. Like, I get that the point is to feign polite interest in the other person. But then by asking this question with the expectation of the same formulaic reply "I'm fine!" (and confusion if the response is something else) - even if the other speaker is emphatically not fine - it literally does the opposite, making it clear that the way they actually feel doesn't matter.
- JojoFatsani 1y agoYeah doesn’t seem that we need to ACK in slack. It’s a boomer tendency.
- codingdave 1y ago> It’s a boomer tendency. wat. No, it isn't. I see it almost 100% from young people who live in India. And that probably isn't the right criteria either - it is probably different people within each organization. This is a cultural thing, not generational.
- vachina 1y agoNot just Indian teens, but Indians in general. Whenever my India based colleague reaches out they always starts the conversation with “hello <first name>”, and then nothing else. If I leave them on read and their patience times out, they’ll then call, irregardless of your status. Boomers never talk like that.
- pigbearpig 1y agoI am in no way qualified on this, but my assumption was that this comes from cultures that consider getting straight to business rude. So while I do find it annoying, I also try to be polite back and I certainly won't be putting some "No Hello" link. If it is a cultural thing and coming from a place of politeness, then I'll engage in a quick round of pleasantries. Once people are familiar, I've noticed this stops.
- codingdave 1y agoExactly. I just reply back when I'm ready. Forcing them into our cultural habits shows a complete misunderstanding and lack of respect of other people. Even better, I like to get my teams to talk about communication early on in projects, so everyone understands how people want to communicate over messaging, expectations on response times, etc. A 15 minute meeting can resolve so many annoyances.
- Sheeny96 1y ago
- apples_oranges 1y agoWhat a non issue? If a solution is needed, software should not notify user about mere greetings
- Propelloni 1y agoI agree it is a non-issue. But the non-issue is a social one and thus the solution is not technology but giving feedback. A simple "Hi Greg, I noticed you opened our conversation with salutations and only send the salient topic after I replied. In the future, please send me the topic in the first message, too. I won't be offended. Thank you. Bob" usually suffices.
- k__ 1y agoI have the impression, we need a guide on remote working etiquette that new hires at remote companies can read before getting started.
- busy_m 1y agoHow To Ask Questions The Smart Way Eric Steven Raymond http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
- stbenjam 1y agoThese topics are so important for junior engineers to grasp, because not only is it helpful for interacting with humans, providing the additional context to LLM's will get you much, much better answers. I wish there was a good source of this information from a less polarizing figure.
- stereolambda 1y agoPeople can choose not to be polarized by figures, especially where the controversies are firmly offtopic. That being said I do find the tone of this guide somewhat annoying and condescending at times. It could use some editing to make it more impersonal and to the point. Justifications and explanations could be attached separately and most people won't read them anyway. When people ask poor questions, it's often precisely because they don't read longform text for some reason.
- jvanderbot 1y agoThis section should be required reading to get on the internet http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#not_losing http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#not_losin...
- imiric 1y agoThe scenario described there would be considered harassment under modern Codes of Conduct. Describing the reaction as behaving like a "loser" is likely offensive itself.
- atq2119 1y agoWhile you're likely right in describing the status quo, it's unfortunate that it has come to that. The one thing that's really objectionable in that section is the last part about people who attack or flame without apparent reason. Such people should be called out by other community members in the same way ESR describes for newcomers in the first part of the section.
- bonoboTP 1y agoI see this more often when someone desires synchronous, multi-turn interaction, not simply "when is that thing starting again?". Things where they aren't exactly sure how to ask the question so they want to rely on you asking questions back and then together zeroing in on the solution of some issue.
- nkrisc 1y agoSure, but it’s still silly. “Hey, I’m having some trouble figuring this thing out, here’s where I’m confused: … <details about problem and questions>. It’s absurd to expect someone to play 20 questions with you to figure out what your problem is.
- bonoboTP 1y agoThey probably need handholding to go through the issue and aren't good at putting into words explicitly what their issue is. Especially nontechnical and nonprogrammer people have problems around structuring and breaking down an issue into explicit parts, with a clearly formulated goal and required inputs and expected outputs etc. Most people's problem-solving relies on a collaborative thinking process where short sentences are exchanged and you rely on the other person actively steering as well, not like an empty chat box. I don't tend to see this "hello" issue with people who are competent in programming or troubleshooting things themselves.
- nkrisc 1y ago> They probably need handholding to go through the issue and aren't good at putting into words explicitly what their issue is. I expect that from students and children, sure. But professionals? > Especially nontechnical and nonprogrammer people have problems around structuring and breaking down an issue into explicit parts, with a clearly formulated goal and required inputs and expected outputs etc. Ah, they were failed by their school system. I remember being taught to think this way in my math and writing classes as a child.
- 1y ago
- postepowanieadm 1y agoHello everyone!
- conradfr 1y ago"You still say hello!" - Uncle Leo I agree with the website. It's even worse when you have to do the "how are you?" back and forth before getting to the actual request.
- Bjartr 1y agoThis is actually an area I've been informally studying for several years. Both the "Hi" and the "How are you?" are phatic. Phatic communication is about establishing social connection rather than conveying explicit information. Both "Hi" and "How are you?" serve in these cases* to eatablish "this is a friendly, casual interaction" by way of social ritual. If you fail to signal non-aggression in this way then, at least neurotypical people, will be more likely to consider you an aggressor. I don't struggle or feel bothered by "Hi" or "How are you?". But I do struggle with threading enough phatic praise and appreciation into conversation to maintain the "friendly, casual" status and can get easily start being treated as an aggressor. * America in particular has "How are you?" as one of these phatic rituals. Different parts of the world have different rituals in different areas of interaction. This can be a cause of friction when moving to a new country and you interpret an unfamiliar ritual literally instead of phatically or misunderstand another's intent because a ritual you expect was missing.
- msgodel 1y agoHello was invented for phone conversations. It doesn't make sense if the conversation isn't verbal.
- gregoriol 1y agoYou can still say hi, with the first message of the day, that's a nice human touch, and not the point here: say hi + what you need to say, that's the point
- msgodel 1y agoGood morning can be nice for that but if you actually have something to say make it the first part of the same message as the content. Saying Hello or good morning and then spending multiple minutes composing your actual message while I'm attending you is extremely annoying. Quite frankly though I don't think it makes sense to do any of that outside a group chat. Just say what you want to say and get out.
- FinnKuhn 1y agoI just send it as one message. So something along the lines of: Hi [Name], [Message content]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Retr0id 1y agoIt's 2025, we should be able to use LLMs to adapt between communication styles. If someone I don't know "hello"s me, my LLM should detect that, suppress the notification, and reply automatically - and then resume notifications and defer to me once non-greeting conversation has started.
- theamk 1y agoSo, basically the classical annoying phone screen but for you coworkers? What's next - "press 1 for a question about FOO, press 2 for.." and level 1 AI support bots?
- homebrewer 1y agoBack in the day of early IMs, some unofficial ICQ clients had anti-spam measures which let you set your own question and answer. Being edgy teenagers, we set "leet" questions, which filtered out the unwantables automatically.
- TeMPOraL 1y agoAlso first mandatory 30 seconds of pre-recorded message on who is processing your personal data.
- msgodel 1y agoRegex is enough of a language model to deal with this, no need for LLMs. On a sane operating system you would be able to suppress notifications with a regex match but most consumer operating systems are no longer sane.
- aeve890 1y ago>Regex is enough of a language model to deal with this, no need for LLMs. Dropbox comment vibes. Please provide the regex you use in your daily communication.
- Mordisquitos 1y ago
- superpope99 1y agocounterpoint - Sometimes I do this for myself to prompt myself into a reply when I'm finding it hard to compose the message. Once I've said something, no matter how small, I know I have to follow up within in a couple of minutes. It's like a kind of short-term Ulysses pact. Also I'd say this depends on your existing work culture - I've been in places where the expectation is that everyone has Slack messages muted. If anything was really that time sensitive it's still possible to pick up the phone.
- jvanderbot 1y agoMy wife, god bless her, is really good with people. I try very hard to mimic her, but this multi-round interaction has completely permeated how she interacts over tech, even with tech. I cannot manage it. Her: "Alexa, add to shopping list". "OK, what should I add for you". "Peanut butter". "OK, peanut butter added, what else?". <long pause while the house has to be quiet until alexa times out>. Me: "Alexa add peanut butter to shopping list". "Peanut butter added". Some people are TCP. Some are UDP.
- SirFatty 1y ago"Some people are TCP. Some are UDP." Nailed it! This is going up on the wall in my office.
- mariusor 1y ago> are UDP. some :P
- mafuy 1y agoMisses, sure. But it should be quite rare that the order is wrong. It would only happen if the route changes.
- mariusor 1y agoEh, comedic posts should probably be allowed some leeway in their attempt at being funny.
- JdeBP 1y agoEspecially as it's impossible to tell whether jvanderbot's "people" datagram got dropped by some intermediate hop in the UDP version or was never sent. (-:
- jvanderbot 1y agoOr, does "Alexa, add peanut butter to shopping list" fall under the UDP frame size? Joke reversed.
- defraudbah 1y agodo we have a version for this to people who call you out of blue? they have a single question and could type it out or email you, instead than ring to you if you don't have the power to tell people to f- off, the only option left is to accept it and either play their game or ignore a type of behavior you don't want to reward
- dmichulke 1y agoIf you pick up you're training them to call you again. Don't feel bad for not answering, just put your phone away for a couple hours.
- sneak 1y agoTeach them how to use dictation mode. They do this because they don’t know how to type and it is easier and faster for them to speak than to type.
- jasek 1y agoMaybe just ask the question in the same line as "hello"? Here ya go...
- jvanderbot 1y agoThe finest summary of this article!
- kingforaday 1y agoI'm also starting to see this a lot recently: - im? It's up there with "yt?" And "Hi <name>.".
- eqmvii 1y agolove this every time i see it, but haven’t yet had the courage to reply to somebody’s “hey” with it
- agentultra 1y agoNo hello but time for goodbye? /s I get it. It’s the same on IRC when people ask if they can ask a question. Just ask the bloody question!
- xattt 1y agoWhen I’m in a Smart Alec mood, I’ll usually respond “you already did” if they ask if they can ask a question.
- inopinatus 1y agoThe other smartass response is “apparently not”.
- agentultra 1y agoMine is, "I don't know, can you?"
- nubinetwork 1y agoI prefer "hey, got a minute?"... or "sorry to bother you, but..." if I know that they're the only one who can fix said issue.
- gregoriol 1y agoIt's always nice to have a (very) little intro, but both of these have a bad subscript. The first one says I know it won't take you long, but that assumes you know the time it'll take me to handle whatever you are going to say, but the reality is that you likely don't know, and even if the conversation itself lasts less than a minute, the person will likely been cut of what they were doing for more than this. The second one is even worse as you imply that you know are bothering me, so don't bother me! (even if it is a polite phrase, it's not nice) In other words, just ask. It's more efficient and doesn't make any assumption: we'll figure out how long it takes and if that bothers me.
- muhwalt 1y agoNSFW (crude audio), but a similar relevant rant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqxyHOllbNk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqxyHOllbNk
- nunorbatista 1y agoThis is not the first time I see this here and to be honest, I was in total agreement a few years ago. In principle, I still am. Then I became a manager, I had to start dealing with more people, to navigate the enterprise environment and I understood that one of my strengths is to be understand people and to accommodate their ways of working. In this context, being hard with people that just say hello just doesn't make much sense to me anymore. People have busy schedules, they start conversations and are interrupted, they receive hundreds of notifications and have other meetings going on. If the worst they do to me is to say hello and never talk to me again, I'm ok with accommodating this in my daily workflow.
- nmeofthestate 1y ago>they start conversations and are interrupted It's not about interruption really, it's about a style of using chat apps that wastes peoples' attention and is easily avoided. > they receive hundreds of notifications okay, so this nohello thing is good advice to help reduce the noise.
- pas 1y agonot to mention that if someone is supposed to be a professional coordinator, they would benefit from being a good communicator. starting a discussion with "hi" and disappearing for minutes is absolutely disrespectful and shitty, not to mention the opposite of efficient. they need to work on their time management.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 1y agoI mean, maybe I’m rude but if someone just messages me Hi on slack I simply ignore it until they send something more substantial.
- TeMPOraL 1y agoIt's fine unless the other person is your superior. Too many managers are oblivious to the fact that their authority over other people's futures makes every interaction threatening by default.
- possiblydrunk 1y agoIt's like a protocol handshake, of course. Why transmit information until you've established that the connection works? Consider it a text modem :)
- h05sz487b 1y agoYes, just send back “ack“.
- quectophoton 1y agoRemember to ask "are you still there?" before sending the answer to their problems, and wait for a response, to make sure the connection is still established. You don't want them to miss the answer to their problem!
- croes 1y ago> you're actually just making the other person wait Where is the problem? Just do what you did until the question pops up? It’s not a phone call, remember ?
- nmeofthestate 1y agoSo you got e-prodded in the head - what's the problem? simply wait for the person to ask their question. (Fingers crossed they don't expect a response before continuing - if it turns out that they do, just spend some time waiting, distracted, and then prod them back to get them moving). This site is saying "don't poke people in the head and then wait for them to ask you why you did that before continuing. It's detrimental for this mode of communication."
- croes 1y agoAre people so easily distracted? I skim the message popup for a real question, otherwise I ignore it. Cost half a second, takes nothing from my flow.
- voidmain0001 1y agoUh, Yes Hello. My technique is to send an initial 'hello' message when I need to get a quick response or when I don't frequently communicate with the other party. After sending the 'hello' message I immediately plough on by sending my next message(s) which are probably questions or wants. With so many people exhibiting ADD symptoms, myself included, a series of notifications on their device encourages them to respond to me. The cat's out of the bag now for why I do this. I also like to inject civility and cordiality into messaging because I find it's treated with barbarism by some that send a message like a stone through a window.
- K0balt 1y agoThe converses already going over a TCP handshake. There is no reason to add another 5 layers down the application stack all the way out into meatspace. My wife does not find this guidance helpful. But, when her mother started doing it to her she went off the rails, so there is some small consolation to be had there.
- d--b 1y agoLet people be people for god sake. If people saying hello on a chat pisses you off, take it as a sign that you need a vacation. I bet when you're back from 2 weeks in the Bahamas, when someone pings you with an empty "hello", you'll reply with a nice "oh hey buddy, what's up?", rather than spending one week building a fancy website to post to HN people who already agree with you.
- dfboyd 1y agoI'm the original author of this content. I wrote it on the internal wiki at Google in 2007. Someone copied it and posted it at nohello.(something) after I left Google. It's made the front page of HN multiple times. The discussions always split between the people who just want to get on with the conversation and the people who can't bring themselves to do that because they consider it unforgivably rude. The second group never seem to take the hint that the first interruption is an imposition in itself.
- macspoofing 1y agoThere's another reason for 'hello' ... it's a way to make sure you have the other person's attention before launching into a topic or question.
- kevindamm 1y agoIf the conversation needs that, many think that indicates it should be an email, or a meeting, not a chat.
- dosnem 1y agoNo way that makes sense. Email is for external conversations. Meetings are hour long.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y agoThat’s a poor reason; I just say “hi” back and tab out until there is another message. They capture my attention with details.
- JimDabell 1y agoThat’s exactly what’s rude about it. Don’t make sure you have their attention. Just send the actual message. If it’s urgent enough that the actual message isn’t enough, “Hello” isn’t going to cut it either.
- macspoofing 1y ago
- ryukoposting 1y agoYknow what? This doesn't bother me. I've had coworkers who do this. You just respond "hello!" and maybe they just ask their question, or maybe they ask about your day, or whatever else. God forbid I spend an extra 4 seconds per day thinking about a person I work with. Do "hello" messages waste time? Yes. Am I happy to field them anyway? Yes!
- quectophoton 1y agoIt's good to communicate with others while putting an effort into keeping the other party as comfortable as possible. That's a sign of respect, but it also goes both ways. Both ways. It can't be just one side always bending backwards while the other doesn't, without even any intention to meet in the middle.
- slazaro 1y agoIt's not about the time it takes to say "hello" back. It's about synchronization steps. What if I don't see the first message right away (i might not see the notification, or I was busy with something else, or I was AFK, etc etc)? Then I reply 20 minutes after with just a "hello" because I don't know what they wanted at all, so I can't reply with any information. Then they might take 20 minutes to respond because they aren't going to sit for an answer, etc etc. It's a waste of interruptions. And for some types of work, like programming (we're in HN after all), interruptions can be more costly than just the "4 seconds" it takes to reply. Them saying "hello" and then without waiting for a reply explaining what they want in a short way, is more efficient and respectful of your time (and theirs, to be honest).
- Sheeny96 1y agoThis can be a cultural thing, at least in my experience. Particularly with Indian and African colleagues, it seems to be ubiquitous amongst them.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 1y agoYep I work with a fair amount of people from India and I can definitely concur anecdotally that this is something my Indian colleagues do more often. It’s a global thing in my experience but definitely more predominant in some cultures than others
- b0a04gl 1y ago[dead]
- benhurmarcel 1y agoI don't understand why messaging apps send repeated notifications for multiple messages instead of staying silent for a time. You've notified once of the first message, it's enough for the next 30s.
- darajava 1y agoThis always bothered me. Maybe it’s an engagement thing?
- okonomiyaki3000 1y agoThis x1000 when you're working with people in different time zones.
- MisterTea 1y agoI have a friend who would always text me "yo yo", which annoyed me, so I would always responded with a picture of a yo-yo. He finally got the hint and now asks "you around?" so yet again, I state I am in fact not a round anything and the saga continues... Just ask the mother flipping question ffs!
- cvoss 1y agoConsider telling your friend you would prefer different behavior from him, instead of passive aggression that, at this point, you have proven is ineffective and only leaves you more frustrated because you feel like he's ignoring your "request" (when he's done no such thing).
- rogerthis 1y agoMy rules: if it's a person I interact everyday, private hello (hi, hey) is ok, and answered with equivalent. If we don't interact usually or have never, if I'm the one starting, then it's "Hi, I'm ..., the one responsible for ... We have this case ... etc etc.". I accept anything. But, anyways, it's just life, don't know why people (even from my generation) are nervous these days.
- dim13 1y agoI usually take it even a step further by skipping useless "hello". Instead of "Hello, did you notice, that db is down? Can you check it please?" Just terse "DB seems to be down. Please check it."
- giarc 1y agoIt's funny to see this here. I manage a large team and just the other day had to deal with irate employees who are arguing over whether they should be saying "Good morning" to each other when they come into the office. One employee thinks it should almost be "mandatory" to greet each other, where the other employee says she isn't in the headspace to be greeting people early in the morning and would rather get settled at her desk. Pretty obvious, but these two employees hate eachother and this is a sign of a bigger problem.
- 93po 1y agoi would hope my manager wouldnt see this as irate employeeS but rather one employee trying to be controlling by forcing another one to bark a response like a trained dog when they've made it clear what their boundaries are for early morning communications. allowing communication boundaries between employees is a pretty basic tenet of treating them with the respect humans deserve
- giarc 1y agoI try to explain to the one employee that is fine to have the expectation that others say Good Morning, but it's also fine that the other employee doesn't want to engage that way. Both things can be true and right at the same time. She doesn't adjust her position and still thinks it's a requirement.
- rsynnott 1y agoQuite frankly this sounds like something from The Office.
- giarc 1y agoThere are many things that basically could be a game of "True Situation vs Scene from The Office"
- rufus_foreman 1y ago>> the other employee says she isn't in the headspace to be greeting people early in the morning and would rather get settled at her desk Uh-oh. Sounds like somebody's got a case of the Mondays.
- kaboomshebang 1y agoIf someone grabs my Slack attention by starting with "Hello" or "Hey <Name>", and he/she doesn't immediately continues typing, a "Permission to speak" is always fun :)
- CGMthrowaway 1y agoWait until you find out what "poking" was on Facebook.
- enzett 1y agoIt's not the same issue, but reading about this reminds me of the litany of pleasantries required for professional communication in Japanese. You can never "just ask your question".
- SAI_Peregrinus 1y agoEven in Japanese you don't need to split the question and the pleasantries into separate messages.
- nirui 1y agoThe example on the page don't really do it justice, because both of them are O(4), and the time delay is arbitrary. The "" example should only consist of 3 operations: Dawn: REQUEST, Tim: RESPOND, Dawn: CLOSE. For example: "Hiya! What time was that thing?", "hey, 3:30", "Ta - seeya then!". Or even just 2, Dawn: REQUEST, Tim: RESPOND (auto close), this could imply that Dawn and Tim are really close, or really not close. BTW: We are not designing reliable messaging protocols here folks. The chat software should tell if any message was lost.
- jpl56 1y agoI have a mouse shortcut that answers "Hi" so that I dont need to reach to my keyboard to answer. But if they keep on with "How are you?", they can go to hell, I'm not answering.
- antonchekhov 1y agoI don't understand why, if the recipient of the initial detached "hello" is annoyed at the communication tax of having to acknowledge it before the querier gets to the real point of the convo, why in the "preferred" example, he/she responds to their gratitude ("ta") with a "np"? That seems like just as much pointless communication noise, only at the other end of the chat. When I say thanks to anyone in real-life verbal communication, their (usually a grunt) "no problem" adds nothing.
- sceptic123 1y agoIt's mostly about flow, you are already interrupted by the hello, and may have to wait some time before their response to your reply (as they then have to type out their actual question. Thanks/No problem is closing off the interruption so there's no future expectation.
- eddd-ddde 1y agoIt's not about trying to eliminate social interaction, it's about minimizing asynchronous overhead and unnecessary waiting. That last "np" is a little nicety that lets the other person know their question was happily answered, no waiting created.
- rich_sasha 1y agoWhen I use IM at work, I basically end up using it like email half the time. Write "hello" at the top, then all what I want to know, all in a single message, so then it gets lengthy, so at the bottom I write something like "great, many thanks", and sign off for good measure. Even when the convo turns interactive, half the time either me or the other guy has to drop off, often without warning. So after some waiting around, I'll write down, in async mode, all I want. It always then feels like basically a different GUI/ API onto email. With more emojis and reactions and stickers and scented candles or whatnot.
- scrumper 1y agoI've seen this a lot from Indian colleagues, some European colleagues, and people from various (not all) Latin American countries too both senior and subordinate to me. I see it occasionally from some older gen X and boomer USA and UK-born people without any obvious correlation to race or gender. In other words it's pretty broad, probably has some cultural aspect to it, but I can't map it to anything obvious. I don't think it's a failed attempt at politeness actually, partly but not only because it's so obvious how to be courteous ("Hi! Hope you had a great weekend, when you get a sec could you tell me XYZ?" or "Hey - hope your day going well. I'm stuck on ABC and it's quite urgent, please get in touch asap.") and it's even more obviously discourteous. I think it's more that we don't have the same understanding of the medium. Slack/Teams/Chat to me is a lot more like text messaging than email, and it's not at all like walking over to someone's desk or phoning them. Their mental model of it probably differs. (They're wrong of course.) Most charitable explanation is, they want a realtime chat and don't want to be pushy about it.
- vidyesh 1y agoSimilarly, https://dontasktoask.com/ https://dontasktoask.com/
- GuinansEyebrows 1y agoi get the initial frustration of not receiving additional context with a request for attention, but a few years ago, i realized that that was my problem to overcome, not everybody else who exhibits this very-common-and-not-at-all-intentionally-rude behavior.
- ninalanyon 1y agoArthur Clarke made this point in a story about high latency communication half a century or more ago. He made the point that one should simply keep talking rather than wait for questions and answers to ping pong back and forth. While one is providing an answer you can be asking the next question. I can't remember the name of the story though. The solution was expressed in slightly sexist terms: speak like to women having a telephone conversation exchanging news.
- hanche 1y agoI could have sworn it was Asimov, but now I’m not so sure. As I remember it, the problem was communication with astronauts in the outer reaches of the solar system.
- ninalanyon 1y agoNow you have me wondering too. I'm still inclined to think it was Clarke because he was much more concerned with scientific and technical plausibility. But now I'll have to dig into it to find out for sure.
- CRConrad 1y agoA) Did you find anything? I would also have bet Asimov. (The "slightly sexist" point also speaks for that, IMO; I think Clarke was less so.) B) Á propos another comment[1] by you, too old to reply to now[2]: Betcha you meant Gustavsberg, not "Gustavsen". They're Swedish, BTW, not Norwegian. ___ [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44012715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44012715 [2]: Yeah, I admit: That's why I came here. But, hey, I found a discussion about two of the Grand Old Three!
- ninalanyon 1y agoOf course you are quite right about the loo. In my defence I was unable to look at it to check as I'm out of the country on holiday. :-) I have been remiss in searching for evidence about the Clarke vs Asimov question. Perhaps I'll try delegating it to ChatGPT. I don't think that it was sexist in a pejorative anti-woman sense, in my (possibly faulty of course) memory it was said approvingly that women had solved a problem that men were struggling with.
- kapildev 1y agoOne valid reason I have seen of people just saying "Hello" is to see if they get ghosted after putting their request. There are some people who can't bring themselves to say "no" and want an escape saying "Oh, I have not seen your messages" or something like that. For those people, hitting them up with "hello" and then putting the request helps narrow it down for you that your specific request made them ghost you and not them being busy.
- illiac786 1y agoIn the same category: https://justinmayer.com/posts/any-updates/ https://justinmayer.com/posts/any-updates/ I find these supremely annoying.
- jrs235 1y ago"If it's important, they'll leave a message."
- roarcher 1y agoThis is a cultural thing as far as I can tell. My American coworkers always just ask their question in the first message, but I worked in an office in Portugal for a bit and every single chat would start with "hello". Drove me absolutely nuts but I knew they just thought it was polite.